Loona being or thinking that she is into Vortex makes so much sense from the queer woman perspective because that’s what girls are just supposed to do—be into the big strong man. The moment another man notices her, she decides to stay at the party... like BE SO DADAS 😭😭😭 Vortex was supposed to be your ardent love, your ONLY ONE.
Are you really THAT ARDENTLY in love with every man that so much as acknowledges your existence, or is it just that you never ended up having a loving parental figure of any kind, and now any man who looks decent and kinda looks at you sometimes is the love of your life—only to then DEFINITELY not fucking forget about them both and keep obsessing over Bee’s every word?
Then she’s once again overwhelmingly positive about her creepy boss she’s usually aggressive toward—just suddenly deciding they’re relatives out of nowhere—because of her desire for male attention. The fact that she’s so caring to intoxicated Blitz afterwards is a good illustration of her feeling like “this is the best male attention I’ll get.” She feels like Blitzo is the best, comparatively, to every other man she’s met—“he cares, unlike Vortex; he stayed, unlike the other man. I love him.”
She needs a CARING parental figure in her life. Not fucking Blitz. A CARING one.
Part 10: You and Me Together has been released! (The Butterfly Effect: A Guide to the Loonaverse)
After a long wait, I'm back with my FULL ANALYSIS of You and Me Together, as well as the rest of the Love & Live EP! You can read it right now HERE!
I hope you enjoy, and once again thank you to everyone who's checked out the site! Love you all <3
The Butterfly Effect: A Guide to the Loonaverse is a site created to catalogue all information about LOONA's lore and present it in a simple and unbiased way for anyone (especially newcomers) to enjoy! Check it out here!
not really a deep-dive into loona lore but some things i noticed in the oec teaser from today
okay i think we all noticed that the representative colors from the teaser are not their representative colors ?
choerry has blue which is jinsoul's representative color, lip has red but i feel like it's not quite like her representative color? i feel like it goes closer to like vivi's pink, and obviously jinsoul having slightly green-ish yellow
as i said before lippie's color is closer to vivi's than her (imo), and jinsoul has yellow which is hyunjin's representative color, two colors that are also shown on ctd's logo
choerry has a diamond that could explain the change of colors by refraction maybe?
also, the picture with inverted colors looks like this
choerry's color looks like orange to me ? like yeojin's color
i'm not quite sure if kim lip's color is green like haseul or eden green like gowon,,,, and jinsoul's purpleish blue so idrk what that means
choerry has a mobius strip earring so that's definitely planned 🥹 the only thing im sure of haha
choerry's the only one who has a diamond while lip and jinsoul both have orbs
lippie alr has been linked to circles/spheres a lot before and im not really sure about jinsoul cause hers is kinda blurred 😵💫
i think that's all i have it might be a little bit of a stretch though lmaoo
but it's good to have hopes of an ot12 agreement with the other companies 🥹 maybe that's the reason of vivi's and hyunjin's colors? also haseul's,,, im so excited,,,,
also thanks to the artms discord for the pics! i downloaded them from there
this could well be pure coincidence but i just noticed in ediny the outfit vivi wears that we know resemble’s kim lip’s eclipse outfit, has a bandana print on the red part around her neck
and in ptt mv/stage outfits kim lip and vivi both wear bandana tops
idk what it could represent lore-wise feel free to use for any theories i just think it’s cute !
WHAT IS THE LOONAVERSE? PART 2 – THE NARRATIVE DEVICES
LOONA is special among K-pop for its immersive storyline. These girls are not just k-pop idols performing a song, they also perform a story and that story is what we call the Loonaverse.
So, what is the Loonaverse? In a few words: The world and story that LOONA inhabits.
Yeah. Duh. But what is it?
Well… it’s complicated.
The Loonaverse is a fictitious story that borrows elements from real science and fantasy to build its world but also uses allegories, metaphors, allusions and other literary devices to tell its story. Our job as spectators (and specifically us theorizers) is to look beyond those devices to understand the message they are trying to send. In this post I’ll attempt to explain the numerous literary devices used to narrate the story of the Loonaverse.
So, these 2 things are LAW:
Each girl has two conflicts: an external one and an internal one.
The LOONAVERSE story is one of fantasy and mystery.
INTERNAL CONFLICT VS EXTRNAL CONFLICT
Or as I like to call it: UNIT vs SOLO
I’ve explained how the girls are trapped in a time loop and how escaping it was their overarching goal. This is the external conflict of the Loonaverse. The progression of this storyline is seen mainly in the Sub-Unit MVs and LOONA MVs but also in some teasers and other videos like Cinema Theory. The conflict is external because: 1) It comes from the outside. 2) The characters not have power against it, at least not at the beginning. 3) The conflict has effect over multiple people.
Also…
Every character has an internal conflict. A personal story. Each girl perceives the world differently and that changes the way they act and interact with each other. It is internal because: 1) It comes from within the person. 2) They themselves may be the cause for the conflict. 3) The conflict has effect on only one person: themselves. This Internal conflict is presented to us in the Solo MVs. Every solo MV is a window to the character’s mind. While the solo MVs are tangentially related to the main external conflict, they mostly focus on the internal conflict of the character.
External and Internal conflicts often mix and interlace each other to create a wider story. We will see how the external conflict fuels the internal conflicts of the girls and how their internal conflicts will shape the way they act towards solving the external conflict.
FANTASY AND MYSTERY
What is fantasy? The genre of fantasy is described as a story based in a world completely separate from our own. It usually features elements or magical/supernatural forces that do not exist on our own world. It is not tied to reality of science.
Wait a minute. You just spent an entire post explaining the science of the Loonaverse. You can’t call it fantasy now. Well yes, yes I can. Since most of the scientific elements I explained are theoretical, unproved in our world but in the world of LOONA they are a reality, a scientific reality. A reality that differs from our own, and thus a fantasy to us. But regardless of that the reason I call the Loonaverse a fantasy is because of the themes it explores.
Fantasy is a broad genre, it is one of the oldest literary genres, being found in old myths. Some of the themes often found in fantasy stories include: tradition vs. change, the individual vs. society, man vs. nature, coming of age, betrayal, epic journeys, etc. All of these themes are very present in the Loonaverse. But I’ll delve into each one as we encounter them.
What is Mystery? The mystery genre is a type of fiction in which a person (usually a detective) solves a crime. The purpose is to solve a puzzle and to create a feeling of resolution with the audience. Some elements of a mystery include: the Crime that needs solving, the use of suspense, use of figures of speech, the detective having inference gaps, the suspects motives are examined in the story, the characters usually get in danger while investigating, plus these:
Red herring. something that misleads or distracts from a relevant or important question and leads the audience to a false answer.
Suspense. Intense feeling that an audience goes through while waiting for the outcome of certain events.
Foreshadowing. A literary device that hints at information that will become relevant later on.
I just though you should know these definitions.
In the Loonaverse, the “crime” is the time loop itself, and the mystery is finding a way to break it. Or so we think. In reality, the “How do we break the loop?” question is solved rather easily. But can we really call this a mystery if the main question is already answered? Yes! It may no be a mystery story for the characters themselves but because BlockBerry uses various mystery genre tropes while telling the story, it is a mystery TO THE AUDIENCE.
That’s right! WE are the detectives!
In a classical mystery, the detective examines all clues, motives, and possible alibis, for each suspect, or in our case, each character. The same way we analyze every MV, every interaction, every possible clue to where and when everything is happening.
The Loonaverse differs from a classic ‘Who done it?’ by establishing that no suspect is actually guilty. The crime IS the loop, but no girl is responsible for it (or so we think). Our job as detectives is not to figure out who is doing this but to explain how and establish an timeline of events that shed a light to what really happened. In that sense, our job resembles more closely a real crime investigation than a mystery novel.
LITERARY DEVICES
There are many literary devices an author can use to tell its story. Too many to cover them all in here, so I’ll focus on the most recurrent ones in the Loonaverse:
Allusion. Referring to a subject matter such as a place, event, or literary work by way of a passing reference.
Archetype. Reference to a concept, a person or an object that has served as a prototype of its kind and is the original idea that has come to be used over and over again.
Faulty Parallelism. the practice placing together similarly structure related phrases, words or clauses but where one fails to follow this parallel structure.
Juxtaposition. The author places a person, concept, place, idea or theme parallel to another
Metaphor. A meaning or identity ascribed to one subject by way of another. One subject is implied to be another so as to draw a comparison between their similarities and shared traits.
Motif. Any element, subject, idea or concept that is constantly present through the entire body of literature.
Symbol. Using an object or action that means something more than its literal meaning, they contain several layers of meaning, often concealed at first sight.
Genre. Classification of a literary work by its form, content, and style.
Some other literary devices worthy of your private investigation are: Negative Capability, Point of View, Doppelgänger, Flashback, Caesura, Stream of Consciousness, Periodic Structure, THEME, Analogy.
About Genre:
Genres are important because they give a story structure. They help an author tell the story in a way that makes it simple for the audience to understand what kind of story is being told. The classic genres of literature are Poetry, Drama and Prose. Some scholars include Fiction and Non-fiction.
In film there are a variety of accepted genres: Comedy, Tragedy, Horror, Action, Fantasy, Drama, Historical, etc. Plus a bunch of subgenres like Contemporary Fantasy, Spy Film, Slapstick Comedy, Psychological Thriller, etc. What defines a genre is the use of similar techniques and tropes like color, editing, themes, character archetypes, etc.
I point this out because the Loonaverse uses many genres to tell its story. Sure, the main story is a fantasy/mystery but every MV or Teaser has its own genre (especially the solo MVs). So, when I point out later that Kiss Later is a romantic comedy or that One & Only is a gothic melodrama, this is what I mean.
TLDR:
The Loonaverse is the world and story that LOONA inhabits. It borrows form real life science and fantasy elements to better tell its story. Each girl has an external conflict (escaping the loop) and an internal conflict (portrayed in the solo MVs). Both conflicts interlace to tell the story. The Loonaverse is a story of Fantasy because it takes place in a different world from ours and it is a Mystery because it is told using various mystery tropes. The story uses multiple literary and visual devices to tell it’s story and fuel the mystery.
REMEMBER: This is all my interpretation. My way of comprehending and analyzing the story. You don’t have to agree with everything. I encourage you to form your own theories. Remember: every theory is correct.
After all that you may be wondering what the story even is. And we’ll finally be getting to that. While I have my own interpretation of the timeline, themes and who did what. I think it’s more fun to slowly explore every brick instead of just summarizing it in one (incredibly long) post. I’ll do that much, much, much later. The journey will be just as interesting as the destination. I hope you’re in for the ride.
Let’s get to the real deal: The MVs. I’m going in chronological order so let’s start with girl No. 1!
Next: The bright pink bunny of LOONA: HeeJin’s ViViD.
Not really sure where I’m going with this but here are some thoughts on yyxy:
The placement of yyxy, whose ‘Neoanthropinae genes’ are emphasised both in writing and in their logo, in a European country with a white teacher with references to Christianity woven through the lore is really interesting to me, because it feels like yyxy rejecting Eden is essentially yyxy rejecting a society that they really weren’t made for.
Of course, the fact that the girls are all Asian (Koreans, specifically) can’t really be removed from the lore, even if their characters aren’t necessarily human. Obviously with all of the gayness (Chuu’s crush), sapphic-coding (ViVi and Yves) and possible sapphic subtext (Go Won looking back for Olivia Hye, who then has to embrace herself), it’s easy to just say “gay girls reject religion”, but I feel like it’s something of a disservice to ignore the fact that they aren’t white.
What’s interesting to me is that it seems like the teacher’s main focus is on Yves (the troublemaker of the group) and Olivia Hye (the obedient student who stays). We see her yelling at the last three members through Chuu’s eyes, but given that it happens between Yves being scolded for sneaking out and Yves leading Chuu away, we can assume that her focus is still on Yves.
Which means that Chuu and Go Won practically fade into the background of love4eva outside of their interactions with Yves and Olivia Hye respectively. The fact that the Teacher doesn’t focus on them in apposition to the fact that Chuu and Go Won don’t have European names insinuates something I haven’t really seen being talked about: the idea that Yves and Olivia Hye are being favoured for their proximity to whiteness (of course not trying to say that Yves or Olivia Hye are white).
This concept makes smaller details - like Yves and Olivia Hye being on either end of a typical lineup (such as uniform inspection) or Yves, when she accepts herself, cutting off some nametags with the English (rather than Hangul) form of her name (her English name is also in the bowling alley; however by the end, the alley is being filled with fog and the camera no longer faces the sign) - take on a new meaning.
This also brings the culmination of their characters to a nice conclusion: in love4eva’s description, we are told that yyxy ‘all come to a realization that ego isn’t decided or made by someone else, but is complete by loving oneself’. Where yyxy begin their story as obedient students (notably a common stereotype for Asians), they learn to break free from the taboos and expectations of Eden by embracing themselves, creating their own identities (yes, even Chuu learns to love herself though her infatuation with Yves).
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However there are some details which make me hesitant to say this was intentional. The main one is Go Won’s hair changing from black to blonde when she accepts herself. Don’t get me wrong, she absolutely makes it work, but blonde hair is universally understood to be a ‘white’ feature, given that most blond people are white. I don’t really like to get personal on here but as a half-Asian person who grew up thinking she wasn’t really pretty because she had brown eyes and dark hair (and yes, fully white people may struggle with this but it’s not in the same way), something doesn’t sit right with me. It would have been nice to see her go from blonde to black to be honest.
(Also why did they bleach her hair then dye it black then go back to blonde? Doesn’t seem very organised...)
Of course, this might have to lead to scrutinising Birdseul, ViVi, Kim Lip and Jinsoul’s blonde stylings (as well as other members in later eras) if we try to view ‘deviance from whiteness’ as a running theme throughout the LOONAVERSE instead of a theme exclusively for yyxy. Plus Kim Lip and Jinsoul’s hair seems to serve more to contrast them to Choerry, with the former two being primary colours and the latter a secondary colour.
(Also funnily enough, a running theme in the LOONAVERSE is running. I guess LOONA drives more nowadays though.)
Anyway, I don’t really have a big conclusion here.
